New look QE site - exciting site work on the new Pathology Centre and Emergency Care Centre

Pag 2 Page 3 Page 4

August 2014

Issue 5

Welcome to our dedicated GP and consultant newsletter This year is proving to be an incredibly exciting and busy time for healthcare across Gateshead and it’s vital that we’re able to keep in touch with our key partners.

We want you, your teams and most importantly your patients to feel a big part of these exciting devel-opments at the hospital because they will play such a major role within the local community.

Later this year we will open a brand new Emergency Care Centre as well as a state-of-the-art pathology lab that will mark the start of a new era for healthcare in Gateshead.

We’re currently looking at ways of improving communications with all our stakeholders from patients and staff, through to GPs and regulators. That’s why we’re looking at making it easier and more conven-ient for you to read and access some of our most important information.

As well as this new electronic newsletter for GPs and consultants we have recently launched a new stakeholder update and will soon be delivering copies of our magazine QE News direct to your surger-ies. We hope that this will enable you and your patients to find out more about QE Gateshead and get all the latest information about our services.

If there is something you would like to see included in Health Matters or anything else you would like to get in touch about, please contact Helen Groom helen.groom@ghnt.nhs.uk or the Trust’s new head of communications and marketing Ross Wigham ross.wigham@ghnt.nhs.uk

Exciting new era for QE Gateshead about to begin Later this year a new era in healthcare will begin at QE Gateshead as we open our new Emergency Care Centre and The Pathology Centre.

Both these projects are almost complete and will provide some fantastic new facilities for people living and working in Gateshead.

The Emergency Care centre is a radically different model of providing care and will see accident and emergency, walk in centre, GP services, medical & surgical assessment and urgent children’s services all come together under one roof.

This new approach to healthcare will see everything coming to the patient, instead of the patient having to move around the hospital and we’re confident that this will mean a more patient focused service with less waiting around.

The new pathology centre will bring ‘world class care, for life’ by becoming a centre of excellence for the region and beyond. The new unit now handles all cold work for Gateshead, South Tyneside and Sunderland.

As well as providing these cutting edge hospital services the new facility will also be looking to at-tract significant new work in a di-verse area of operations.

More information on both of these buildings, including a video tour, is available on the trust web-site.

Emergency Care Centre

The new Pathology Centre

QE Gateshead is one of the country’s best— it’s official The Queen Elizabeth Hospital has again been named as one of the safest in the country and is now the only hospital in the North East to win and retain the top rating from the national regulator.

The new inspection system first started in 2013 and The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has now confirmed that the QE will remain at a band 6 rating (the highest pos-sible) after figures from the latest Intelli-gence Monitoring Report were published today. QE Gateshead was first awarded band 6 status in October 2013, while an unan-nounced inspection in the same year pro-vided unprecedented praise and a clean bill of health for all of its services. The report gathers local and national data and assigns each NHS trust a banding based on their risk to patients.

Every trust in the country has been graded from band 1 (highest risk) to band 6 (lowest risk) and Gates-head Health NHS Foundation Trust remains at a band 6 rating. This means that the CQC has recognised the QE as one of the safest places in the country for patient care. Ian Renwick, chief executive of QE Gateshead, said: “This is fantastic news for the hospital and for the thousands of patients we treat every year. It is the strongest possible acknowledgement of the efforts made by our staff to provide high quality care to all of our patients day in, day out. “Very few hospitals around the country have been able to achieve and maintain this high standard and I know that all our staff work so hard to ensure services are safe, caring, responsive to need and well led. Our managers and front line clinicians are working together every day to ensure that areas of good practice can be shared across the trust. “This is a very exciting time for health services in Gateshead and this news comes as we prepare to de-liver some major developments at the QE during the rest of the year.”

Best ever year for preventing infection on our wards

So far, 2014 has been the best ever year for the prevention and reduction of infection at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

QE Gateshead adopts a zero tolerance approach to all avoidable infections including Meticillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and has had zero reported cases of MRSA bacteraemia up until July 2014.

The hospital now has one of the lowest Meticillin sensitive Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) bacteraemia rates in the region during 2013/14 and has reduced cases of Escherichia coli by 53% against the same reporting period last year.

The infection prevention and control team has done lots of work to help and educate not only staff but visi-tors of the impact that they can have on infection rates in the hospital.

A number of life-size pop-up banners of the infection prevention team now greets visitors at most entranc-es asking them to wash their hands before and after visiting, and to stay away if they aren’t well.

The hospital has also seen a reduc-tion in outbreaks of infection.

An outbreak is the occurrence of two or more actual or potentially related infections within a ward or depart-ment.

The Trust has only experienced two outbreaks in this financial year demonstrating a reduction of 82% against last year’s figures to date.

Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) presents a key challenge to patient safety across not only our trust, but others too. Last year the trust report-ed a total of 20 positive cases of CDI however this year only 5 cases have been reported so far.

One of the life size infection banners

Dementia care link to nature A team at the QE Gateshead are recreating a famous Victorian park within a hospital garden, as part of their work using nature to treat patients with Dementia.

Cragside court is currently being redeveloped after work in Gateshead found that exposure to nature had a range of beneficial effects on patients and could trigger positive emotions and memories.

Dr Karen Franks, consultant in old age psychiatry and psychologist Kate Andrews have just published their findings as part of a new book looking at the benefits of outside spaces for people who have dementia.

The new garden area is now being transformed into a beautiful space evocative of Saltwell Park with more green space and a bandstand area.

As part of the research the team visited care homes with boxes of home grown vegetables, herbs, compost, hay, flowers and autumn leaves. They then worked with residents using a technique that explores in detail how patients make sense of their per-sonal and social world.

The researchers found that access to nature and the natural world can play a key role in restoring a sense of purpose, unlocking memories from the past, bringing meaning to patients experiences and providing a calming affect for people living with dementia.

Dr Franks, who is based at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead said:

“Access to nature really helps evoke positive memories for our patients and many have talked about working in allotments, taking trips to the beach or family outings to Saltwell Park. Unfortunately pa-tients can often spend long hours indoors and helping them connect with nature has a really positive effect which can also mitigate some of the more challenging behaviour associated with dementia.

“Most of the patients we worked with grew up in a very urban setting and throughout their lives sought out ways to connect with the natural world. They used nature as a way to bring balance to their lives and emotional state. Sadly, they became disconnected with this relationship later in life and you have to wonder if this may add further to the loss of a sense of purpose that appears to be experienced by many people with dementia.

“Lots of people in 24 hour care or in care homes often have poor access to nature and the outside world is rarely brought in except on the coats of visitors. We found that the sensory experience can be calm-ing and refreshing for patients but also seems to trigger people’s memories.

“This is really beneficial because dementia forces people into an unfamiliar mental state and these posi-tive memories of the past are both familiar and reassuring.

“We need to look at new ways of treating and managing the condition because more and more people will suffer from dementia and live longer. We’re really encouraging people in care homes or care set-tings to utilise nature and make the best use of their outdoor spaces.”

The QE has also invested £35,000 in a new pilot scheme to create a more friendly environment for peo-ple with dementia in hospital wards.

Community growing on social media Have you joined the social media revolution?

Across the NHS social media is becoming an increasingly important way of communicating and engaging

with local people. So far more than 912 people are now following QE Gateshead using these channels

and it’s an area that’s growing quickly.

Last month around 1,700 people directly interacted with the Trust through our social media channels, a

total of 2,200 times.

Social media helps us become more accessible to our patients, staff and partners and engage with them

much more easily. It also lets us join in the online conversations about the Trust and get an early warn-

ing system about potential problems.

We’ve been tweeting and posting all the latest news about the Trust, and more importantly, using it to

pass on vital messages to members of the public when required. Please do get in touch if we can link

with you on these networks or support work that you are doing on social media.

Why not join the conversation?

Our Facebook page is: www.facebook.com/

qegateshead

Our Twitter page is:

www.twitter.com/QEGateshead

BSG conference success for endoscopy Last year the Endoscopy team, patients, a representative from the national endoscopy team, archi-

tects, admin staff, medical staff, NETS team and service improvement staff were involved in a project

to redesign an Endoscopy department which would be future proof.

The existing department , despite the addition of state of the art decontamination equipment and the

provision of an additional procedure room, is rapidly being outgrown. The endoscopy team were invit-

ed to speak at an annual conference held by the BGS (British Society of Gastroenterology) to share their

experience of the redesign, the “3P” project was led by the NETS team and was funded by the Health

Foundation in the shared purpose category.

Feedback via the BSG chairperson after the event confirms the verbal accolades on the day that the

whole session had been excellent. The experience of speaking at a prestigious National conference is

one the team will never forget.

Gateshead clinical commissioning group merges The three clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) in the Newcastle and Gateshead Alliance are set to

merge after receiving the go ahead from NHS England.

Following a rigorous process the three CCGs, which are made up of NHS Gateshead Clinical Commission-

ing Group (CCG), NHS Newcastle North and East CCG and NHS Newcastle West CCG, will become a sin-

gle statutory body from April 1, 2015.

Alliance chief officer, Mark Adams, said he felt a merged organisation would be better placed to face

the challenges for the NHS in the future: “We needed to make sure that the three CCGs could continue

to make the most of the advantages of working together and ensure that we are best placed to meet

our operational challenges and deliver improvements in outcomes for patients as efficiently and effec-

tively as possible – merging will help ensure we can do that.

“We were very pleased indeed to receive feedback from the NHS England panel visit which highlighted

that all three CCGs were performing well and that by moving to a new merged organisation we had an

even greater potential to do more for public and patients. The panel also took the time to feedback

about the passion of our people in particular singling out the strong clinical and managerial leadership

and this is a testament to our people and their commitment to the NHS.”

New partnership to enhance feedback A new project to help patients provide feedback on their

care is about to get underway after QE Gateshead began a

partnership with free website Justvisiting.com.

The just visiting website was initially designed to support hospital patients to communicate and reduce

the number of telephone calls to ward staff asking for progress reports on patients. The service has now

been expanded to enable patients to give live feedback on their care and make suggestions for improve-

ments.

This can be done in a secure and confidential way, 24 hours a day using the Hospedia terminal at the

bedside. Just visiting can also be accessed via Facebook, Twitter and other social media. The scheme is

being introduced following a successful six week pilot in the surgery centre, when the Trust

received feedback from 24 patients about their experience while in hospital.

GIN (Gateshead Information Network) and IIG (Integrated Informatics Group) The GIN and the IIG are two groups, with overlapping members, who are working in the community

(GIN) and the hospital (IIG) to try and ensure that our IT systems support our clinical work and com-

munications.

We have worked together to roll out the GP Handover Form and ensure that it continues to improve. In

the last few weeks the groups have been discussing the possibility of using EMIS WEB within the hospi-

tal.

This is the electronic patient record system that all of Gateshead GPs will be moving to. The company

has now grown from ‘just’ being a GP-focused IT company into providing similar systems for community

services and now hospitals.

Dr. Helen Groom said:

“Potentially this is a very exciting move that could underpin co-ordinated care for patients between,

practices, hospital and community services.

“Discussions are still at an early stage and we need to work out if it will deliver what is required, wheth-

er we can afford it and whether the right safeguards for confidentiality can be put in place. However,

the ability to view, in EMIS WEB a patients GP records; then swop to their hospital records; and then

their community records should have huge benefits for patient care.”

Keep in touch We hope you enjoyed reading Health Matters which will now be sent out by email once a month.

If you would like to submit stories for the this newsletter or offer any feedback on content please do get

in touch with either Helen Groom (Helen.groom@ghnt.nhs.uk) or Ross Wigham

(ross.wigham@ghnt.nhs.uk).

Thanks for reading.